POEMS BY KEITH ARMSTRONG
FIRST PUBLISHED BY IRD ARTS CLUB 1972
byker
antique mart of memory’s remnants
glad bag of fading rags
bedraggled old flag
blowing in the wind over newcastle
we stand on street corners shivering in the winter
like birds sheltering from the wind
we do not rattle loose change in our pockets
only the nuts and bolts of poverty
we are splinters
ill-shaven
our clothes droop on us
using our bones for hangers
we avoid mirrors and images of ourselves in shields road doorways
we do not look through windows
we draw curtains of beer across our eyes
we sleep/place bets
every week on dole day hunger prods us awake
it is instinct
it is a fear of never waking
yesterday’s records in a raby street window
yesterday’s news
revolving today
pictures of byker trapped in a camera
yesterday’s photos
developed today
yesterday’s headlines
today’s wrapping paper
yesterday’s wars are bloodless today
snot drips nose
wailing ragman drags a foot
and sniffs
any old rags
any old rags
hair like straw
homespun
snot runs
licks cracked mouth
any old rags
any old rags
as raby street
declines
into
water
any old rags
any old rags
watson’s toffee factory
wrapped in mist
melts in the watering mouth of the dawn
another byker child is born
another byker son assumes
the dusty jacket of a byker man
and this is the truth
the wind-ripped reality between the grave and the womb
the aimlessness
the weary broken people
shuffling through the measured lines of architects’ reports
the cripples
the dying streets
behind the brash and snatching shops
the coughing strays
this is all the small print
the drifting words
beneath the glossy covers
and this is mother byker now
a wasteland of schools
churches public houses
a frail old woman
her mouth and eyes bricked over
tilting
on her last legs
change
creeps like a lizard over the face of byker
dragging behind it its retinue of planners
wreckers
builders and
visionaries
tomorrow
you will wake from your years of sleeping
and find what you knew to be yours being hauled away
over byker bridge on the backs of lorries
your yesterday
in clouds of dust
byker folk are living still
byker folk on byker hill
fading flowers on a window sill
byker folk
hang
on
